Posted inReality Religions

Atheists and agnostics are open-minded

I'm open to the possibility that god or some other manifestation of the supernatural exists. I just don't see any convincing evidence of this. Being open-minded isn't the same as being gullible, as Greta Christina says in a great blog post, "Are Atheists Open-Minded?"For starters: "You have to have an open mind" is not the same as "Here's some good evidence for why my idea is right." Yes, it's good to have an open mind. How is that an argument for religion or spirituality being correct? I mean, if someone insisted that they had a three- inch- tall pink pony…
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Posted inGod Reality

My best guess about God

Nobody knows what ultimate reality is, which religious believers call "God." All we have are guesses, some more defensible than others. Here's mine -- after some forty years of delving into mysticism, spirituality, religiosity, and philosophy. Subject to change, of course. If I've learned anything, it's that there's always more to learn. Or guess about.I'll be as pithy as possible, a shift from my usual wordiness.(1) God doesn't exist. Not in the sense of an all-knowing, all-powerful personal or individual consciousness. Or even a universal consciousness, though this is more likely than an anthropomorphic God.(2) The cosmos is, always has…
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Posted inGod Reality

Truth is greater than God

What should we choose, reality or belief? This was the theme of one of my first Church of the Churchless posts almost six years ago, "Just have faith."Here's how to tell the difference between true faith and false faith: Imagine that you are standing in the middle of a bare windowless room. Two doors lead out of the room. Both are closed, but can be opened with a turn of the doorknob. The doors are marked with signs that describe what awaits on the other side: (A) Reality, (B) BeliefAfter you open a door, you have to walk through it.…
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Posted inReality

Church of Reality is a good place to worship

Ask, and you shall receive. A few months ago I wrote "Wanted: a religion that reflects reality." Recently someone left a comment on that post pointing me toward The Church of Reality. It's worth browsing around. I like the tagline, If it's real, we believe in it! Also, We are realists practicing realism, winning souls for Darwin!Welcome to the Church of Reality. Welcome to the Real World. That's our church greeting. Thank you for visiting our web site. If you are frustrated with the current state of the religious world and looking for some sanity, you came to the right…
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Posted inHumor Reality

The universe is a paper bag turned inside out

Some forty-two years ago, back in 1968, I had a revelation: The universe is a paper bag turned inside out. Now, at the time I had some reasons to doubt the veracity of this insight into ultimate reality, since it was fueled by mescaline and dissipated the following day. But another guy and I intuited this truth at the exact same moment. Far out. Today I've gotten confirmation that, indeed, the universe is a bag turned inside out. Tucson, a regular Church of the Churchless visitor, left a comment on this blog post that said, in part:Our perception is like…
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Posted inReality Universe

The cosmos doesn’t have a cause

Often it's said that the biggest, grandest, most profound philosophical question of all time is... (drum roll, please) Why is there something rather than nothing?I used to be entranced by this question. Now, I'm not. It doesn't make any sense to me. I've got some pretty impressive philosophical company in this regard: Bertrand Russell.Here's what this agnostic philosopher said in his 1948 debate with Father Frederick C. Copleston (Jesuit Catholic priest).I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all... I can illustrate what seems to me your fallacy. Every man who exists has a mother, and it…
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Posted inReality

Agnosticism’s profound respect for reality

Thanks to commenter George, who posted a quote from Thomas Huxley about how he came up with the term "agnosticism," I've been able to appreciate more deeply this faithless approach to life.Here's the quotation:When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last.…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Getting real is geniune spirituality

Spirit. Matter. Heaven. Hell. Soul. Body. Words... If they don't point to something real, they're interesting expressions of human cognition. But the mind can come up with all sorts of abstractions. If these aren't grounded in anything other than more concepts, clinging to them leads us into a airy-fairy world of our own imagining.I love this quote from Thoreau's Walden.No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity…
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Posted inReality

Cioran’s “A Short History of Decay” — existentially bracing

Some books are like last night's 20 degree dog walk, much of it facing into a brisk wind. I hated it and I loved it. My overriding perception during the two miles was: This is marvelously real. And fucking cold!

E.M. Cioran's "A Short History of Decay" struck me the same way — like an icy splash of reality. A book that demolishes so thoroughly, it leaves you on firm ground. 

After coming across quotations from it, and being intrigued, I found a used copy of the first (1975) English translation online. Cioran, a Romanian philosopher, wrote "A Short History of Decay" in French. It was published in 1949.

The back flap captures my reaction to the book perfectly.

"I regarded A Short History of Decay," the author recently wrote, "as an experiment in annihilation; or perhaps more precisely, a negative approach to life. But to my surprise, the great majority of its readers apparently found it invigorating. This is what me aware of the vital quality of Destruction."

Yes, this is a bleak book. Yet also a strangely uplifting one. Many passages resonated with my churchlessness.

Cioran's style has been called aphoristic. So it's possible to get a good sense of "A Short History of Decay" from this selection of passages that made me grab my yellow highlighter after being shocked by the author's jolt of existentiality.

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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Maya is illusion: Alan Watts’ good news

People are fond of saying to someone they disagree with, "get real!" It's a put down to be told that you're living an illusion.So when Eastern religions tell us that this physical existence is maya, not really real reality, it's natural to feel concerned. Even though life seems pleasant enough most of the time, what if I'm living a dream and a much better state -- nirvana, satori, enlightenment, god-realization, buddha nature -- awaits beyond my current consciousness horizon?Not to worry, says Alan Watts in "Become What You Are," a book that belies its title because Watts tells us that…
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Posted inReality Science

Don’t worry about yourself. You don’t have one (a self).

Ah, I love instant enlightenment. OK -- not exactly instant, because I had to watch 54 minutes of a You Tube video before I got to Thomas Metzinger's philosophical "money shot" right at the end.But I had enjoyed Metzinger's book, "The Ego Tunnel," which I blogged about here, here, and here.So when I saw a mention of the video on my Twitter feed, I figured that it would be worth watching. I'm a sucker for a Zen-titled talk, "Being No One," from someone who specializes in scientific perspectives on the philosophy of mind.Most of Metzinger's presentation is pretty darn boring.…
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Posted inReality

Wanted: a religion that reflects reality

Well, already there's a seeming contradiction in this blog post -- the title. Because if a religion truly reflected reality, it'd be part of the scientific world view, not religiosity.So what I mean by "religion" is something more like a philosophy, poetic vision, or statement of what life is about. A meaning-dimension that adds depth to the everyday here and now while remaining consistent with the consensual truths about the cosmos known to science.Traditional religions come up way short in this regard, along with most non-traditional faiths.Consider some of the facts (open to alteration, of course) that a reality-based religion…
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Posted inReality

Primal awe: the mystery of existence

I don't need concepts like "religion," "spirituality," and "mysticism" to feel a sense of awe. All I need to do is contemplate the ultimate mystery these words point to.Existence. The fact that the cosmos is. And I am. As I've noted before, the primal mystery of existence is the black hole of all knowledge, experience, understanding, and whatever. It makes notions like enlightenment, theory of everything, self-realization, ultimate reality, perfect truth, and the like go zap! -- sucked into a cosmic void of not-knowing that erases false claims of knowing-it-all.How could it be possible to fathom the "it" of existence? Where is…
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Posted inGod Reality

Shake up your unexamined worldview — it’s fun!

I used to cling to a quasi-fundamentalist view of the cosmos. Now, I don't. I've come to enjoy a deliciously exciting sensation of feeling rigidly settled ways of looking at the world transform into a more naturally fluid vision of reality. "Naturally," because if there's one thing we can be sure of, it's that we can't be sure we know everything about anything. So I love someone who comes along with a Paradigm Shaker which busts up worldviews that are widely accepted without good reason.Don Cupitt, for example. I read his book "After God" a few years ago. I liked…
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Posted inReality

Science is real — you are too (but in a different way)

Thanks to Pharyngula, I got turned on to a "Science is Real" video by They Might be Giants. l love it when cartoonish characters make so much sense -- more than a lot of real people. "What's real?" is a terrific question. There's no end to possible answers. It seems to me, though, that some things almost certainly are really real about reality.For us human beings -- every species is different in this regard -- there's a shared reality. If there wasn't you woudn't be able to read these words that I've written, and I wouldn't be sitting in a…
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Posted inReality

Here’s the big cosmic question: “What’s the question?”

Back in my true believing days, I figured that I knew both the questions to ask and what the answers were. For example:Q. How does one return to God?A. Get initiated by a perfect living guru, and follow his teachings about meditation and other matters.A Christian, on the other hand, would think along these lines:Q. How is one saved from sin?A. By accepting Jesus as his or her personal savior. Of course, the questions presume quite a bit. In my case, that there is a God. And it is possible (plus desirable) to return to God. In the Christian case,…
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Posted inReality

Nature is real, religion is illusion

Here's one big change that churchlessness has produced in me: I no longer believe that this world -- where all of us are living now -- somehow is less real than an unseen theoretical heaven or higher realm of the cosmos.In fact, it's hard for me to accept that I ever believed this, because it doesn't make any sense. What would make someone turn away from what is right in front of them and try to embrace something imaginary that has no demonstrable evidence of its existence? Short answer: religion.Or, some sort of mental illness. In either case, the nature-denier…
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Posted inReality

Searching for the reality in nonduality

I've been enjoying a comment conversation that's been happening on my "Mind in the Balance" post. The basic theme is whether nondualism is just another belief system, like any other philosophy or religion, or a genuinely unique direct realization of reality.Might as well throw some of my own ideas into the discussion stew. First off, though, I've got to admit that while I understand the notion of "dualism" pretty well, "nondualism" has never lodged in a comprehension niche within my mind.Of course, nondualists like Ramana and Nisargadatta -- whose teachings I'm familiar with via a number of books I've read…
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Posted inReality

Meaning of life is made, not discovered

I love books that lead me to look upon something familiar in a fresh way. Like, life's meaning. I've spent a lot of time pondering the meaning of life. And, searching for it.Now that I've read about half of Eric Maisel's "The Atheist's Way" (highly recommended), I realize that my pondering is on the right track. The searching, not so much. In fact, Maisel has done a good job of convincing me that viewing the meaning of one's life as something to be discovered leads nowhere. Unless you want to adopt someone else's values, rather than your own.Before you can…
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Posted inReality

Logocentrism isn’t cool for the churchless

Wow, this blog is rocketing upward in philosophical sophistication. After putting up a post where I used the word "deconstruction" as many times as I could, now I've got "logocentrism" in a title.My inspiration, as before, is a wonderful philosophy comic book by Jim Powell, "Deconstruction for Beginners" (which I surely am).The basic notion of logocentrism, which is a bad, bad, bad thing to Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, is sort of hard to pin down -- which is to be expected from a philosophical approach that dismantles the foundation of meaning.Here's a pretty good brief description.1. Belief that…
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